Tag Archives: Christian

News

UK Independent joins UK Guardian in call for Dawkins to debate Craig

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A call for Richard Dawkins to debate William Lane Craig, from the other major secular-left UK newspaper. (H/T Michael & Czar Berstein)

Excerpt:

William Lane Craig is a formidable debater. He has done battle with celebrity academic atheists including Lawrence Krauss, Lewis Wolpert, Peter Atkins, and Sam Harris. Not long after his exchange with the philosopher Anthony Flew, perhaps the leading atheist thinker of the late 20th century, Flew converted, if not to Christianity, to deism. Harris described Craig as “the one Christian apologist who has put the fear of God into many of my fellow atheists”.

Christopher Hitchens said: “I can tell you that my brothers and sisters in the unbelieving community take him very seriously. He’s thought of as a very tough guy: very rigorous, very scholarly, very formidable.” After a debate in which the two locked horns, one US atheist website pronounced: “Craig was flawless and unstoppable. Hitchens was rambling and incoherent, with the occasional rhetorical jab. Frankly, Craig spanked Hitchens like a foolish child.”

William Lane Craig is the Professor of Philosophy at Talbot School of Theology in California. He is a conservative evangelical, but he is smart, with a doctorate in philosophy from Birmingham and one in theology from Munich. He has developed such a reputation that when he began a 10-day speaking tour of Britain on Monday he drew an audience of 1,700 at the cavernous Central Hall in Westminster.

The titles of his UK lectures give a clue to his breadth: “Does God Exist?”, “Can We be Good without God?”, “The Origins of the Universe – Has Stephen Hawking Eliminated God?”, “The Historicity of Jesus’s Resurrection”. He is unafraid to range across ontological theology and moral philosophy and talks with ease about new developments in cosmology, mathematics and physics. He has a ready command of easy analogy and can be funny. He is a million miles away from the evangelical rhetoric that amuses and bemuses our secularist and modernist establishment. Proof, he says, is not about scientific or mathematical certainty; it is about a cogent and logical argument which is more plausible than what opponents argue.

This is not the style of the Dawkinsites’ preferred adversaries. Their debating techniques tend to be catalogues of religion’s historical atrocities, coupled with psychological sideswipes about the Tooth Fairy and Father Christmas. Dawkins in the past has been notable for seeking out extreme oddball fundamentalists. He and his followers routinely erect a straw man – defining religion in ways unrecognisable to many mainstream believers – and then knock their caricature to the ground. But Craig is an opponent of a different calibre who focuses ruthlessly on failures of internal logic in his rivals’ arguments.

What is striking to the outsider is the ad hominem abuse that has been hurled his way. Dawkins has blogged of his “almost visceral loathing” of Craig’s “odiously unctuous, smug and self-satisfied tone of voice”. Craig, he says, is a “deeply unimpressive… ponderous buffoon” who uses “chopped logic” for “bamboozling his faith-head audience”. On Dawkins’s website his supporters have called Craig a “debased freak” and “snakeoil salesman”.

The writer of this article not so much sympathetic with Craig as he is disappointed with Dawkins for not being willing to debate and defeat Craig. I think that most of the atheists on the Richards Dawkins site have never heard Craig’s arguments, otherwise, they would be pointing out the flaws in them and linking to evidence. When someone dodges what I am saying and instead insults me personally, I think it’s fair to assume that they don’t have a case against me based on substance. If they had substance, they would argue substance.

The UK Guardian article denouncing Dawkins for cowardice is here. The conservative UK Telegraph explicitly called Dawkins a fool or a coward for not debating Craig. But I don’t think it’s going to happen, because Dawkins is a coward. That’s just what he is. And I think he isn’t even intelligent enough to lose as badly as Hitchens did – it would be a much worse defeat for atheism. The man has never expressed any substantial arguments for atheism in any of his books – it was always just bile. And I never saw William Lane Craig’s publications or those of any other major Christian thinker referenced in the footnotes of his books – he is oblivious to the arguments on the other side.

My response to Dawkins’ refusal to debate Craig is here. In it, I go over Craig’s qualifications, Dawkins’ reason for not debating him, and link to Craig’s debate with Christopher Hitchens.

News

Justin Brierley interviews William Lane Craig on the apologetics project

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Justin Brierley has posted an interview with William Lane Craig in the UK magazine “Christianity”. (H/T Mary)

Here’s the introduction:

Type ‘William Lane Craig’ into Google and you find some surprisingly varied views. For example, you’ll find Rick Warren tweeting about his ‘friend’ for whom he has written a recent foreword, and other Christian leaders praising an academic who combines intellect with humility. On the other hand, you may come across Richard Dawkins labelling him a ‘ponderous buffoon’ along with other commentators on his atheist website who describe Craig in even more colourful terms.

So what is it about one American philosophy professor that inspires such divergent views? Craig is arguably the best known defender of the intellectual case for Christianity in the world today. As a philosopher, his work is published in academic journals and books. As a popular apologist for the existence of God, his high-profile debates with leading atheists have been viewed by hundreds of thousands around the world. His style is polished, systematic and devastatingly thorough.

To his fans he is the commander-in-chief of a resistance movement against the populist New Atheism – the man who can floor Goliaths such as Christopher Hitchens and Sam Harris. To his detractors, he is a wordsmith and a showman – a professional debater who, to quote Richard Dawkins, ‘brandishes impressive-sounding syllogisms from Logic 101 to bamboozle his faithhead audience’.

To me, he comes across as sincere, humble and somewhat bemused by the opinions that are expressed about him online. Is he affected by the words that some atheists write about him? Laughing, he responds: ‘It doesn’t get to me because I don’t read it. I am in blissful ignorance of what these folks are saying about me.’

So why is Richard Dawkins even bothering to comment on William Lane Craig? It is because he has refused multiple invitations to debate Craig when he comes to the UK this October. They met once briefly in a panel debate in Mexico in 2010, an encounter that led to those online comments. Craig’s supporters (and many of his opponents) would like to see a more substantive one-on-one debate, but Dawkins has resolutely refused to face the philosopher again.

To Craig, it is a confirmation that ‘New Atheism’ is more bluster than substance. ‘I would describe it as a pop culture movement, rather than a serious intellectual one. But as pop culture I do take it very seriously. They have the momentum, and it’s very important that we as Christians expose it for the superficiality that it is.’

Here’s are a few of the questions he answers:

You’ve debated leading atheists all over the world. What is your ultimate hope in participating in these events?

Well, one hope is to help to reshape Western culture, which has become deeply secularised, so that Christianity becomes an intellectual option again. I hope especially to reach out to British students seeking for truth and to show that making a commitment to Christ is not a delusion, but perfectly in step with the dictates of reason.

Is this a biblical approach to evangelism?

I think so, especially in Acts. Paul would argue from the scriptures with his Jewish brethren that Jesus was the Messiah. When dealing with a Gentile audience he would present reasons from nature and conscience, moral and cosmological arguments, and appeal to the eyewitness testimony of Jesus’ resurrection. Paul would do things like rent the Hall of Tyrannus and hold daily lectures there to argue and discuss with anybody who wanted to come. So I see myself as very much following the model of Paul.

Are local churches failing young people by not preparing them for the tough questions they run into at university?

I think we are failing them. If we simply read our children Bible stories and give them entertainment and emotional worship experiences, then we are leaving them unprepared for the tremendous intellectual challenges that they will encounter in secondary school and university. I think it is vital that from an early age Christian parents teach their children to think ‘Christianly’ about the world, and to articulate and defend what we as Christians believe.

Do you see people becoming Christians through your ministry?

We really do. It happens when I speak on a university campus… people will register commitments through comment cards at the meetings, and there are also the wonderful emails that we receive weekly from people all around the world saying ‘Thank you, thank you, thank you, this has transformed my life.’ Added to that is the effect that this has had in the lives of people who are Christian believers. Once they become confident that this is really the truth, it has an energising effect on them that makes them want to share the gospel. It gives them a zeal for God and a desire to read his word and know him.

I really recommend you read the whole thing. I hope that we are making more scholars like Craig, because Christian scholarship is the best defense to the secularism that threatens to suffocate Christianity once and for all. I really do think that the church has to get serious about motivating and funding scholars like Craig, and not just in the area of philosophy, but in all the areas that are relevant to the task of apologetics. I think that young Christians should choose to study areas that are relevant to the task of apologetics, especially, science, history and philosophy. That’s where the action is.

About William Lane Craig

William Lane Craig is currently conducting a debating and speaking tour of the UK, with stops at Oxford, Cambridge, London and points in between.

Let’s review William Lane Craig’s qualifications:

William Lane Craig is Research Professor of Philosophy at Talbot School of Theology in La Mirada, California.

Dr. Craig pursued his undergraduate studies at Wheaton College (B.A. 1971) and graduate studies at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School (M.A. 1974; M.A. 1975), the University of Birmingham (England) (Ph.D. 1977), and the University of Munich (Germany) (D.Theol. 1984). From 1980-86 he taught Philosophy of Religion at Trinity… In 1987 they moved to Brussels, Belgium, where Dr. Craig pursued research at the University of Louvain until assuming his position at Talbot in 1994.

He has authored or edited over thirty books, including The Kalam Cosmological Argument; Assessing the New Testament Evidence for the Historicity of the Resurrection of Jesus; Divine Foreknowledge and Human Freedom; Theism, Atheism and Big Bang Cosmology; and God, Time and Eternity, as well as over a hundred articles in professional journals of philosophy and theology, including The Journal of Philosophy, New Testament Studies, Journal for the Study of the New Testament, American Philosophical Quarterly, Philosophical Studies, Philosophy, and British Journal for Philosophy of Science.

Craig’s CV is here.

Craig’s list of publications is here.

Here are some of Craig’s recent publications: (it’s a little out of date, now)

From 2007:

  • Ed. with Quentin Smith. Einstein, Relativity, and Absolute Simultaneity. Routledge Studies in Contemporary Philosophy. London: Routledge, 2007, 302 pp.
  • “Theistic Critiques of Atheism.” In The Cambridge Companion to Atheism, pp. 69-85. Ed. M. Martin. Cambridge Companions to Philosophy. Cambridge University Press, 2007.
  • “The Metaphysics of Special Relativity: Three Views.” In Einstein, Relativity, and Absolute Simultaneity, pp. 11-49. Ed. Wm. L. Craig and Quentin Smith. Routledge Studies in Contemporary Philosophy. London: Routledge, 2007.
  • “Creation and Divine Action.” In The Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Religion, pp. 318-28. Ed. Chad Meister and Paul Copan. London: Routledge, 2007.

From 2008:

  • God and Ethics: A Contemporary Debate. With Paul Kurtz. Ed. Nathan King and Robert Garcia. With responses by Louise Antony, Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, John Hare, Donald Hubin, Stephen Layman, Mark Murphy, and Richard Swinburne. Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2008.
  • “Time, Eternity, and Eschatology.” In The Oxford Handbook on Eschatology, pp. 596-613. Ed. J. Walls. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008.

From 2009:

  • Ed. with J. P. Moreland. Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology. Oxford: Blackwell.
  • “The Kalam Cosmological Argument.” With James Sinclair. In Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology. Ed. Wm. L. Craig and J. P. Moreland. Oxford: Blackwell.
  • “In Defense of Theistic Arguments.” In The Future of Atheism: Alister McGrath and Daniel Dennett in Dialogue. Ed. Robert Stewart. Philadelphia: Fortress Press.

Forthcoming:

  • “The Cosmological Argument.” In Philosophy of Religion: Classic and Contemporary Issues. Ed. Paul Copan and Chad Meister. Cambridge: Blackwell.
  • “Cosmological Argument”; “Middle Knowledge.” In The Cambridge Dictionary of Christian Theology. Ed. G. Fergusson et al. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • “Divine Eternity.” In Oxford Handbook of Philosophical Theology. Ed. Thomas Flint and Michael Rea. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Craig has debated dozens of times against the top atheist scholars. If you have never taken in any of his debates, take a look at his debate against Christopher Hitchens on Youtube.

Commentary

Atheist philosopher: Dawkins refusal to debate is cynical and anti-intellectual

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This article by atheist Daniel Came about Richard Dawkins’ refusal to debate William Lane Craig was published today in the UK Guardian. (H/T Mary)

Excerpt:

In his latest undignified rant, Dawkins claims that it is because Craig is “an apologist for genocide” that he won’t share a platform with him. Dawkins is referring to Craig’s defence of God’s commandment in Deuteronomy 20: 15-17 to wipe out the Canannites. Here is Craig’s offending passage:

“[If] God’s grace is extended to those who die in infancy or as small children, the death of [the Canannite] children was actually their salvation. We are so wedded to an earthly, naturalistic perspective that we forget that those who die are happy to quit this earth for heaven’s incomparable joy. Therefore, God does these children no wrong in taking their lives.”

I am disinclined to defend the God of the Old Testament’s infanticide policy. But as a matter of logic, Craig is probably right: if an infinite good is made possible by a finite evil, then it might reasonably be said that that evil has been offset. However, I doubt whether Craig would be guided by logic himself in this regard and conduct infanticide. I doubt, that is, that he would wish it to be adopted as a general moral principle that we should massacre children because they will receive immediate salvation.

But whatever you make of Craig’s view on this issue, it is irrelevant to the question of whether or not God exists. Hence it is quite obvious that Dawkins is opportunistically using these remarks as a smokescreen to hide the real reasons for his refusal to debate with Craig – which has a history that long predates Craig’s comments on the Canaanites.

There is a lot more in the article that is worth reading, including a quick review of Dawkin’s “The God Delusion” that echoes Craig’s own comments. I don’t mind that atheists think atheism is true, and that theism is irrational. That’s their view, and they are entitled to hold it and speak it and teach it. But I think that Came is right to say that they should also be willing to defend it in public. Dawkins is clearly not willing to defend his views, and that tells me that he has no reasons to believe them.

Please read my earlier post about Dawkins’ editorial in the UK Guardian. It contains a response to Dawkins’ attack on Craig, an analysis of Craig’s qualifications, an assessment of Dawkins’ ability to debate, and a previous debate between Craig and prominent atheist Christopher Hitchens.